itch.io

Thanks for the feedback! The walls are definitely the worst part... you can kind of pincer them off the walls a little bit, but if I'd had more time I would definitely have had them automatically walk away from objects they bump into to avoid that a little better.

That's a good idea! I definitely ran into that problem when playtesting as well. Unfortunately I was torn between not having enough time and also not wanting too much UI getting in the way of the art

Neat idea! Definitely a lot of room for more puzzles, too. I think the function of each color is a little too vague, and because of that a lot of early puzzles feel like trial and error because of the way things combine, but especially for a jam game I don't think that's a big problem

Great concept and really good execution.

I found jumping with w and swapping with space awkward since I'm so used to using space to jump. I would've preferred using Shift or something for the soul control stuff.  

Great work overall! I think there's a good bit of potential for expanding the idea with other obstacles that only affect the soul or the body specifically and such

Thanks for the feedback! 

I think that getting an animal off of the edge is easily the biggest flaw of the game - I wanted to make them walk away from obstacles after hitting them, but it was one of the things that fell by the wayside unfortunately.

Thanks! Time constraints (and being generally busy) made it difficult to put in the story we wanted (and balance the gameplay) but we definitely had stuff in mind. 

The main idea for me was to ensure you had to switch sides in order to win - balancing how many enemies you let past on either side and managing when you switch to keep one side from running away with the win. 

Turns out though that's pretty complicated without playtesting and playtesters. The idea only really comes through in the 2nd and mostly 3rd level (which is significantly harder than the 2nd). Since they're much longer levels, there's more chances for enemies to slip by you to the point where it's inevitable. 

The idea is that you *have* to let some enemies by, and it's a matter of minimizing it and ensuring that it's the team that's behind that you let by to keep things even. I don't think we quite accomplished that, but the 2nd and 3rd levels (though overly difficult) do a little bit

Thanks for playing! Glad the controls weren't too tough (and also that I'm not totally crazy regarding the difficulty lol). Overall (especially with health and invincibility after getting hit) the game's fairly forgiving. 

I was able to beat the game on the hardest difficulty on my first try, but yeah without more enemy types it's hard to have it be properly tough without being just unfair. I mostly prioritized features other than new enemies because I was more interested in coding waves and an upgrade system and such.

The shotgun deals a little more damage, but is mostly useful because it can hit any number of zombies in range at once, and pushes them back to give you space if you get overwhelmed. 

Thanks for the feedback! We'd heard a few players complain about not having any options without ammo, so I've just updated the game to include a melee attack option! It's risky, but at least now there's a chance even without ammo.

I'm glad you mentioned the combos! I think that's one of the most fun parts of the game haha.

Thanks for the feedback!

I've just updated the game with a melee attack to give the player some recourse if they waste a few bullets early on (alongside giving the player more bullets to start on Easy mode). It's risky, but you at least have the option now. Give it another shot if you get the chance!

I've just updated with a melee attack for when you're out of ammo! Give it another shot if you'd like - the melee is risky but it means you at least have some alternative without ammo.

Hey there, I ended up running with your idea and just updated with a melee attack! Give it another shot. The melee attack is pretty risky, but it means you have a chance even if you run out of ammo (even if it's much harder to kill with melee).

Updates are allowed in the rules!

I thought I did but I'm not sure if it did it properly... 

I tested the version on the page and it has the new aim, so just refreshing it should work I think

I just wanted to come back to this - I've updated the build to shoot the way you're facing if you're not aiming with the arrow keys! Now it should be much more playable with your aiming preference. Give it another shot!

You're not the only one that found aiming difficult - for you and anyone else who found the keyboard controls a little difficult, I've updated the build so that you now shoot the direction you're facing if you're not aiming with the arrow keys/right stick! Hopefully that makes things a little easier, so give it another shot!

As to infinite ammo, we can't really do that because the entire point of the game is managing your ammo. If we'd done a little more playtesting and had time though, I think I would've added in a weak melee attack, so if you run out of ammo you still have a chance to defend yourself and grow more ammo. 

Thanks for the feedback, and I hope you have a chance to play it again with controls that work better for you!

Unfortunately our musicians ran out of time for the gameplay music. I'm glad you liked the core mechanic!

I agree that more enemies would make it better, but I guess that's just jam games for you. I wanted to include an enemy that didn't hurt you but would attack your plants, things like that for variety, but having difficulty levels and upgrades ended up taking precedence.

This is a really neat one! I beat it on my second try, but it certainly wasn't easy - I was on the verge on losing, it felt like. I thought the difficulty was in a good spot, especially given the eldritch kind of inspirations behind it. It very much should feel next to hopeless, and it felt like you did that while making it always feel just possible.

The ending did confuse me a tiny bit, since the win text is pretty similar to the lose text at the very beginning. It was neat to see a game with so much more writing than most jam games, even if it meant that the game was very text-heavy. 

If there were more time for features, I'd love to see threats evolving over time instead of being random each day, and maybe even being able to take on multiple threats per day. It could be really interesting to have another set of decisions - do I take out some easy threats, or do I make sure the harder threat is taken care of now before it gets even harder and becomes critical? But obviously that would create a whole slew of balancing difficulties beyond the scope of a jam, haha.

Good work!

Thanks for the feedback!

As for 1, I think if there was more time I would probably have an option for aiming where you're facing, or at least making it so that bullets fire the direction you're facing if you're not holding arrow keys - I probably could have done that in the time we had, so that was definitely an oversight on my part.

On 2, as a designer, difficulty is often something I mis-judge, especially for jams where there's little time to get others to playtest. I wanted to keep the game in a space where you're really forced to position the zombies for the sake of watering your plants, but I think the player should probably be able to get away with more on the easier difficulty levels, especially with regards to how many bullets you start with.

Yeah, that's the biggest challenge for these jams I feel like. You spend a bunch of time just getting everything to work, and then realize you still need to build all these levels... Haha you made more than enough game to be able to make an improved camera though! I bet you can do it

Fun little platformer! I'd have liked to see more puzzle elements. Games with world-switching mechanics like this (like Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams) can do a lot with puzzle elements alongside the platforming difficulty.

The biggest critique (which others have talked about) is the camera is too high relative to the player, and stays fixed on the player. 

I highly recommend reading this Gamasutra article on cameras in sidescrollers. Something like the platform-snapping camera-window used in Rayman would do wonders for the issues that your camera has.

Fun little game! One little nitpick that I had personally is that I have a habit of holding down jump buttons pretty much until I land. In this game that really threw me off because it only seems to check if jump is held down and not if jump was just pressed, so I would often land from a jump and instantly jump again when  I didn't want to.

Cool to see a PICO-8 game here though! I haven't used it before (I'm all Unity most of the time) but it seems fun to use.

Simple but entertaining for a bit. The difficulty seems to cap out, though, I got bored a bit over 250 and stopped because it wasn't getting any harder. I feel like it could get a bit tougher.

Also, holding space is a bit odd, since there's never a reason to not hold space. I just held down space with my other hand the entire time, which made it feel like it might as well not be a feature. If you wanted to keep it, you could make it so that you can't move while you're holding space, which makes it much tricker and ensures the player has to press space only when they need to and not just all the time.

This was neat and I think it's awesome that a GameBoy rom is included. 

However, it seems like the "enemy" movement is random. Unless I'm wrong about that, it means that if you're unlucky the final part of the last level can be pretty tedious as you just wait for the guy to walk far enough in the right direction without doubling back too soon.

Simple but effective. The colors and sounds definitely help a lot. I also appreciate the QWEASDZXC control option, since I don't have a numpad.

Like other have said, it's very small and difficult to see, but I also can't seem to do anything. I tried WASD and Space and nothing happened even though those are listed as the controls.

I kind of just sprinted through each level until I got to the end. I don't really know why throwing coins is important, because the guards didn't really seem to interact with them much. The controls are also kind of wonky, like they're rotated slightly. When I press right, the character drifts up, and when I press up, the character drifts right, etc.

Also, I saw a prompt to press E near a guard so I did, and then a guard sprite filled my screen and I couldn't do anything. The level never restarts, I can't press E or move, clicking doesn't do anything.

Really interesting concept! Easily the most creative way around the limitation I've seen so far. I love that the ice block slid around, but I was expecting it to make me slide much more. I ended up with a score of 1652 and there only seemed to be force from the block sliding at the very end, and it seemed to be inconsistent with the direction the block was sliding in... When the block slide down and left, the penguin slid directly to the right relative to the block, instead of sliding up and to the right. 

I think the difficulty started too low and ramped slowly, so I had to come back to it after reading the comments to even realize there was any force from the block sliding around at all. I think it'd be nice if the difficulty started higher and then maybe ramped a little slower to compensate or something.

This is great! Very relaxing, the art, sounds, and music all work together very well. I was a little sad that there wasn't any kind of reward or congratulations screen after completing all the orders, though.

One of the other comments brought up the backup weapon thing as well. If I'd thought of it I might have added a low-damage low-range melee attack that you can do for free.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

Per the instructions, you need to water the plants for them to grow - kill zombies near the plants for them to grow

I was able to just hold the jump button and never really had to play, I just zoomed up off the screen.

It looks like you used the render texture downscale method to pixelize, which can work, but it struggles to deal with scrolling objects tightly packed, so you end up with a lot of flickery boxes, and it also results in a lot of instances of the letter "i" just not being visible at all in the text at the beginning.

It won't load in browser. You should try uploading it as a developer build - that's usually what I have to do to get Itch to play the WebGL stuff properly.

Beyond that though, it doesn't actually restrict the game to 96x96 pixels. I kind of just hold space and nothing can get past me? Also, if I run all the way to the right my character flips out and I instantly lose.

Glad you enjoyed it!

That's a great idea! Some kind of high risk option that gives you at least a fighting chance. 

Unfortunately our musicians didn't have time for that music, but we definitely wanted to have music everywhere

Great jam concept. Fun to have a gacha/idle with an ending haha!

Give my game a try if you have the chance!

Neat concept! It might be more challenging if you didn't keep the fruit when you died, though. I felt like I could kind of skip parts of levels because I got to keep the fruit.

Please check out my game as well if you have the time!

Neat concept! It might be more challenging if you didn't keep the fruit when you died, though. I felt like I could kind of skip parts of levels because I got to keep the fruit.

Please check out my game as well if you have the time!

Real nice and chill! I'd like to see actual words instead of random characters, but it's definitely understandable given the time constraints.

Please check out my game as well if you have the time!

That's a good idea! It would definitely work well as an alternative control scheme

Look up!

Great idea, and a solid execution too! It fits the theme well and works nicely as a puzzle-platformer, and I can see a lot of really interesting puzzles coming out of this. Please check out my game as well if you get the chance!